Devastation surrounds me. Everything... everyone... gone. I feel the power coursing through my veins like liquid ice as I float above the bare ground. My eyes burn with an unnatural purple glow that I can't control. Dark veins pulse beneath my skin, a visible manifestation of the corruption consuming me.

I try to scream, to warn them to run, but my mouth won't move. My body isn't my own anymore. I can only watch in horror as my hand rises of its own accord, a sphere of pure nothingness forming in my palm. The void projectile shoots forward, and I'm forced to witness as everything it touches simply... vanishes. Not destroyed—erased. As if it never existed at all.

Silence fills the once-bustling road. Empty now. No one left. No one but me.

Inside, I'm screaming. Sobbing. Trapped behind unseen shackles in my own mind. I tried to resist, to stop it. But I was too weak. It lied to me. It promised to bring back my family if I just let it help, if I just accepted its power. Instead, it took control. Now it forces me to watch, helpless, as my own hands erase without mercy.

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When none remain, only then am I freed. I collapse to my knees as control returns. My tears fall onto bare earth where moments ago an entire world existed. It's my fault. All my fault. The entire caravan—gone. The merchant, his family, their guards—wiped away like they never existed. Even the trees that lined the road have been erased, leaving nothing but empty space.

The little boy's eyes haunt me most. He had looked up at me, pleading for mercy. He couldn't have been more than five. Just like I was, when I lost everything. And now... now I've become the very monster that destroyed my own family.

My stomach heaves and I throw up, violent sobs wracking my body. The taste of bile fills my mouth, but it can't wash away the horror of what I've done. What it made me do. What I let it do.

I will never trust its promises again.